Trump gives RNC speech, recounts assassination attempt: Highlights

Jen Psaki speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

From being a part of many convention speeches in the past, I think we can all agree this was not a traditional one. The first 35 to 40 minutes were about himself, about Donald Trump. He only stuck to the teleprompter for a page and a half or so.

Also, for a man who is not a person of faith, but has struck a chord with the faith community in our country. There was one line that stuck out to me: “I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God … Many people say it was a providential moment.”

He was surrounded by photos of his own bloody face that were projected in the arena. Obviously, that was a very traumatic moment for him and for the country, but he also spoke about this as if it was sort of a calling from God.

We'll see how he speaks about this moving forward. But I also think if you’re tuning in and not really paying attention, or you’re undecided, you may see his speech and think maybe I'll go with the other guy.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Joy Reid speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

To paraphrase Erik Killmonger: “MAGA, is this your king?”

If Joe Biden had given a rambling, shambling, all-over-the-place speech like that, elected Democrats would be demanding that the 25th Amendment be invoked immediately. They would scramble even worse than they are now to jettison him as the candidate for president. We would be questioning his mental acuity.

That speech was proof that there’s not just one old man in the race. Donald Trump is an old man clearly in decline and we must start talking about him the same way that we are questioning Joe Biden, because Donald Trump cannot stay on message for even five to 10 minutes — even when telling a story about the most traumatic moments of his life.

Donald Trump is not a candidate that Democrats should be terrified of. Their terror is embarrassing tonight. Again I have to ask: MAGA, is this your king?

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Four years ago, Trump’s acceptance speech ran 75 minutes and landed with a thud. This year, he spoke for nearly an hour and a half, went on a dozen or more tangents, and, after recounting the assassination attempt on him early in the address, made no effort to tamp down the usual rhetoric.

Trump declared that Democrats “used Covid to cheat” in the 2020 election. He lied about crime rates, his inflation plan and his tax plan. He didn’t even bother mentioning abortion, because even he knows no one would believe anything he says about it. His only good fortune was that a good portion of the country likely went to bed before he finished.

In short, this was among the worst — if not the worst — acceptance speeches any presidential nominee has given. And as more members of Biden’s party ask him to step aside, Democrats on all sides of that issue should ask themselves some hard questions, given that this is the candidate they are losing to in many polls.

Nicolle Wallace speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

I think if you’re wondering what impact Donald Trump's speech has on the viewing audience, you have to wonder how much of the viewing audience stayed through.

It was longer than modern baseball games with a new pitching clock — I don’t even know that all baseball games last that long. It was very lengthy, very meandering. I hope that the bigger message anyone in the pro-democracy side got tonight is that the pro-democracy candidate, the Democrat, can beat him — by a lot and decisively.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Despite being billed by Republicans as a convention focused on national unity, I think it wrapped up true to the form of the Republican Party.

Kid Rock, Tucker Carlson, Dana White, Hulk Hogan and Trump — five men who've made headlines for bigoted comments — closed it all out. Pretty telling that the RNC felt the people best suited to drive home their purported message of multiracial unity and political harmony were these guys.

Trump had said he rewrote his speech to focus on calling for unity after his assassination attempt, but his remarks tonight were classic Trump. The speech was more than 90 minutes long, and he went off script again and again, greatly exaggerating or lying about his administration’s accomplishments in his first term.

Trump made brief, sweeping attempts to appeal to a diverse group of voters, but his overall talking points on immigration, foreign policy, the economy and violent crime remained as grim as ever. The dissonance between his call for the country to heal from “discord and division” while having played a major part in sowing such conflict — including criticizing Biden, Democrats and “crazy Nancy Pelosi” tonight — was unmissable.

The lack of any abortion talk in Trump’s speech is notable, and it mirrors the other convention speakers’ deafening silence on the issue this week. Abortion rights is a losing issue for Republicans at the ballot box and one that the party remains divided on. The GOP platform this year — parts of which The New York Times reported Trump had dictated personally — had no mention of a national abortion ban for the first time in 40 years.

Trump touted his endorsement from Hungary’s authoritarian Viktor Orbán, whose illiberal behavior Trump and fellow Republicans have praised repeatedly. 

Orbán, Trump claims, thinks Russia and China fear the former president. That certainly contradicts Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, who said world leaders viewed Trump as a “fool.” 

This whole aside felt like a truly self-aggrandizing diatribe, though I’m not sure many folks outside the MAGA bubble lionize Orbán enough to care what he thinks. 

Trump took a veiled shot at Biden’s “cancer moonshot” in a part of the speech that was not in the prepared remarks.

In the middle of boasting about how American technology will “soon be on the verge of finding the cures to cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and many other diseases," Trump took a swipe at his opponent. “You remember this gentleman that I don’t want to mention other than one time I had to,” he said, referring to Biden. “This man said, we’re going to find the cure to cancer. Nothing happened.”

In 2016, then-Vice President Biden launched a project often called the “cancer moonshot” after losing his son Beau to brain cancer, and he relaunched in 2022 after he was elected president.

Trump has gone way off script, making this a very rambling speech that feels relatively low energy for a politician known for riling up his crowds. His remarks were supposed to be just over an hour but we're nearing the 90-minute mark at this point.

HuffPost's Igor Bobic reported that "lots of delegates [are] on their phones" at this point of the speech.

In the middle of a diatribe about how much North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un likes him, Trump mocked people who asked how he could possibly get along with someone like Kim.

“It’s nice to get along with someone who has a lot of nuclear weapons,” Trump deadpanned to the audience.

He may have said it like a joke, but it speaks to why rogue countries like North Korea sought out nuclear weapons in the first place. It undermines the entire concept of nuclear nonproliferation, showcasing how even the mighty United States will be forced to listen if you only get a few nukes to guard your back.

Trump has railed against a “woke military” before, but tonight he distinguished between service members and the “fools” in higher positions in the military. He made a brief mention of it, saying: “We have a great military. Our military is not woke, it’s just some of the fools on top that are woke.”

Trump has said something to this effect before. Last month, asked by Fox & Friends Weekend if he would fire “the woke generals on top,” Trump said, “I would fire them. You can’t have woke military.” Read more from my colleague Steve Benen on Trump’s vow to remove military leaders who don’t align with his ideology.

“Our crime rate is going up,” claims Donald Trump, “while crime statistics all over the world are going down.” But it’s not true. As NBC News reported last month, “the rate of violent and property crimes dropped precipitously in the first three months of 2024 compared to the same period last year, according to quarterly statistics released Monday by the FBI.” Overall, violent crime was down 15.2%, with murders down more than 26%. That’s on top of a significant decline in 2023 as well according to the same FBI data.

Trump's "no tax on tips" proposal has become a catchy rallying cry on the campaign trail lately, and not surprisingly also got a reference during his RNC speech. But experts do not agree that this plan is the best way to substantially help all — or even many — tipped workers in America.

As Sharon Block, a professor of practice at Harvard Law School and the executive director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy wrote for MSNBC back in June: "The first element of a pro-tipped worker agenda would be to end the tipped minimum wage... The next element of a pro-tipped-worker agenda would be to raise the minimum wage."

Read more below:

Trump promised he’d lower taxes and get rid of inflation, but the math says otherwise. A report from the Center for American Progress Action Fund, for example, found that his 10% tariff on all imports — and 60% on imports from China — would impose a $2,500 tax on the average American household. And the tariffs would also increase inflation by as much as 2.5%. Last month, 16 Nobel laureates penned a letter warning that Trump’s economic program would “reignite” the inflation that plagued millions in recent years.

Trump just bragged about dramatically slashing the length of the Republican Party’s platform.

“This week, the entire Republican Party has formally adopted an agenda for America’s renewal,” he said before veering off his prepared script. “You saw that agenda, and it’s very short compared to the long, boring, meaningless agendas of the past, including the Democrats.”

“They write these things that are hundreds of pages long, and they never read them after they’re done,” he added. “In their case, fortunately they don’t read them, because they’re pretty bad.”

The Trump team dramatically cut the party’s platform by nearly three-fourths, while they pushed delegates to pass it quickly and without any leaks.

Still, the platform was more of an effort than 2020, when the party skipped writing a platform entirely due to the truncated convention.

Despite the generally optimistic tone, Trump’s speech still had a few moments where partisan rhetoric slipped through.

For example, he referred to the “Democrat Party,” an old pejorative that dates back to the 1940s and was revived in the modern era by former Speaker Newt Gingrich, since “Democratic” sounds too much like “democratic,” which has positive connotations.

He then referred to the classified documents case, recently thrown out by Judge Aileen Cannon, as “the fake documents case,” the “meaningless Green New Scam” (a reference to the proposed Green New Deal), “crazy Nancy Pelosi,” “Deface the Nation” (a dig at the CBS News show “Face the Nation”) and Democrats “cheating on elections.”

These smaller moments — only some of which were in the prepared text of his remarks— were revealing because they tend to grate on the very undecided voters that Trump claimed to be reaching out.

Trump, repeating dubious claims he and his supporters have made in the past, argued tonight that “our planet is teetering on the edge of World War III” — and only his isolationist approach to foreign policy can avoid it. Such baseless claims have been undercut, however, by foreign policy experts like Fiona Hill, who served in Trump’s administration. Hill, a key witness who testified against Trump in his first impeachment trial, explained to Politico last year that abandoning the United States’ NATO allies or reneging on our promises of support could drive nations to increase their nuclear arsenal, girding themselves for conflict. 

In other words, one could argue Trump’s policy proposals may end up accelerating a global conflict — not avoiding it.

Trump claimed that if returned to the White House, he’ll “bring down prices, and bring them down fast” after years of runaway inflation. The plan he pitched is the same plan Republicans have been pitching for years: more drilling for oil and natural gas.

The argument goes that by increasing the supply of petrofuels, the costs for everything else will go down. The problem with that is twofold: First, the U.S. is already producing “more crude oil than any country ever,” according to the International Energy Agency, outpacing both Russia and Saudi Arabia this year. Second, and more problematic, oil prices are set internationally and even that glut of American oil isn’t enough to get OPEC to reduce their own profits.

Doubling down on petrofuels instead of renewable resources is a move with diminishing returns, especially given the worsening effects of climate change that continued oil production — and Trump’s pledge to back off electric car production — will exacerbate.

Trump is increasingly veering off script as he goes on tonight, adding whole sections riffing on the words he’s reading off of the teleprompter. It’s transforming what was already set to be a lengthy address into a much longer speech and adding in non sequiturs like Democrats “used Covid to cheat” in 2020 when talking about his policy toward Iran. He also name-dropped Biden and Nancy Pelosi, despite neither being in the prepared text. It’s hard to tell where we’re going to wind up by the time we get to this end of this speech, compared with his promise of “unity.”

Trump just praised Judge Aileen Cannon, the federal judge who just dismissed his classified documents case in Florida. Trump nominated Cannon to the bench during his lame duck period after losing the 2020 election.

After the classified documents case was dismissed earlier this week (a ruling special counsel Jack Smith is appealing), Trump used his speech to praise her as a “highly respected federal judge in Florida,” offering rare praise for the widely criticized judge. It’s yet another reminder that Trump seems to believe the legal system should serve his personal interests.

“We will make Wisconsin great again,” Trump proclaimed. But he’s made that promise before. In 2017, the Trump White House touted a $10 billion factory from Taiwan electronics manufacturer Foxconn that would create 13,000 jobs. Trump held a gold-painted shovel and boasted the manufacturing campus would be a crown jewel for his “America First” agenda. 

By 2021, the investment was scaled back more than 90%, and Foxconn largely abandoned the project.

This gap between Trump’s rhetoric and reality can be found across the state, with more counties having lower unemployment under Biden than under Trump. And earlier this year, Biden announced a $3.3 billion data center from Microsoft — on that same property Foxconn and Trump had once promised to make “great” again.

In the middle of recounting Saturday’s shooting, Trump told the crowd that “I am not supposed to be here tonight.” In response the audience began to chant “Yes you are! Yes you are!” Trump took in the adulation before responding: “No, I’m not” and continuing with his prepared remarks.

The crowd also took up the cue to begin chanting “Fight! Fight!” as Trump reached that point in his recollection, echoing the cry at the rally when the Secret Service led him off stage. And after a moment of silence for firefighter Corey Comperatore, there was a round of “We love Trump” from the assembled masses.

Trump went into detail about last weekend’s assassination attempt, saying he realized immediately that he had been struck by a bullet in the ear and ducked, and that the audience “did not move an inch” as the gunshots rang out because they thought he had died and didn’t want to leave him. Videos show some audience members crouching down and moving during the shooting, but the crowd did largely remain in place.

Trump also honored Corey Comperatore, who was killed in the shooting, and David Dutch and James Copenhaver, who were upgraded to stable condition after being critically injured.

After recounting the attempt against his life, Trump eulogized Corey Comperatore, the man killed during the rally shooting last weekend.

Comperatore, 50, died trying to protect his family, officials said. He was a former fire chief for Pennsylvania's Buffalo Township and a father of two.

At one point, Trump walked over to a stand that was holding up Comperatore's fire helmet and jacket. Though Comperatore's name is misspelled on the jacket, it was of his part of his official uniform.

Trump then called for a moment of silence for Comperatore.

Trump’s speech included this confounding bit of verbal judo. “We must not criminalize dissent or demonize political disagreement,” he said. “In that spirit, the Democrat Party should immediately stop weaponizing the justice system and labeling their political opponent as an enemy of democracy, especially since that is not true, in fact, I am the one saving democracy for the people of our country.”

Two things: First, it’s honestly bizarre that Trump is criticizing criminalizing dissent when his 2016 campaign’s unofficial slogan was “lock her up.” He also threatened to deploy the military against unarmed protestors in 2020. But more importantly, this MAGA mumbo jumbo proves polls that suggest there is bipartisan concern among Americans for the future of democracy need to be taken with a grain of salt. In the worldview that Trump is promoting, his attempts to overturn the 2020 election were about him protecting democracy — from Democrats’ voter fraud. It follows, then, that his supporters would think Biden and Democrats are the actual threat, no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary.

As Trump recounted the attempt on his life on Saturday, he praised the “very brave Secret Service agents” who were “putting themselves in peril.” Not all of his supporters feel similarly.

“At least three female agents were among those protecting Trump in the moments after the shooting,” reports NBC News, “and in the days since, their actions have become popular targets of criticism and jokes among conservatives, with several posts on X receiving more than 10 million views.” Republican Reps. Tim Burchett and Marjorie Taylor Greene have also denounced Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle as a “DEI hire” and a “DEI initiative person” respectively.

Trump, the 45th president, just formally accepted his party's presidential nomination in the hopes of becoming the 47th president next year.

Following his prepared remarks, he went to to describe the assassination attempt against him on Saturday. On retelling his experience, he said: "You'll never hear it from me a second time because it's actually too painful to tell."

UFC president Dana White, a longtime Trump supporter who faced condemnation last year for slapping his wife on camera, just wrapped up his hypermasculine speech portraying Trump as a strong man Americans want and need in charge.

As I’ve written on the ReidOut Blog, White and fighters in the UFC have repeatedly used the company as a platform to promote Trump and play up his purported toughness. I’m not sure that speech or White’s appearance will do much to win over many women voters. But Trump’s campaign seems more focused on appealing to misogynistic men more than anyone else.

A number of speakers tonight have said that God saved Trump from being assassinated. Leading the convention in prayer, the Rev. Franklin Graham directly credited God. 

“Our heavenly Father, we come before you this evening with grateful hearts,” the noted evangelist leader began. “Thank you for saving the life of President Donald J. Trump. In his own words, it was you and you alone who saved him.”

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said it was “divine intervention.” Speaking directly to his father from the stage, Trump’s son Eric credited “the grace of God, divine intervention and your guardian angels above.”

But it was the Rev. Lorenzo Sewell, the pastor of a Black church in Detroit that Trump visited last month, who went the furthest, arguing at the climax of his speech that God saved Trump for the country’s future. 

“You can’t deny the power of God on this man’s life. You can’t deny that God protected him,” he said. “You cannot deny that it was a millimeter miracle that was able to save this man’s life. Could it be that Jesus Christ preserved him for such a time as this?”

Sewell added: “Could it be that the king of glory, the lord God strong and mighty, the God who is mighty in battle, protected Donald Trump because he wants to use him for such a time as this?”

Lawrence O'Donnell speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

When I was working in the Senate in the 1990s, what you saw was the abortion issue doing was exactly what each party needed it to do.

You couldn’t imagine the Republican Party without it. There was just no way they could come close to winning a national election without it. They needed that piece in their coalition.

But you also knew that they never ever wanted it to go away. I didn’t believe George W. Bush wanted it to go away, because then what do you do? How do you how do you campaign on the issue? I never dreamed Ronald Reagan wanted it to go away, or George H.W. Bush.

And the Democrats were very good at using it against them. Both sides were using the issue for enormous fundraising. It just seemed like a status quo that served both parties.

What the Democratic Party was saying was preserve Roe v. Wade, and the Republican Party was saying get rid of it. But then they got rid of it and now, the guy who got rid of it is afraid of talking about it.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Don Jr. has long been heralded as the heir apparent for the Trump family. After all, he is the eldest son and the one with the deepest ties to the alt-right movement that helped fuel his father’s initial presidential run.

But in this new era, it’s Eric whose wife is running the RNC, Eric who got the better RNC speaking slot, addressing the convention ahead of his dad. It’s also worth noting that while the New York civil fraud case is being appealed, the Trump family's main business is politics. Either way, Eric is clearly a workhorse when it comes to his dad’s interests, even if his older brother is the one who has historically garnered the most attention.

The former first lady has finally arrived on the convention floor in the final hours of the RNC. Her entrance followed Eric Trump's speech. Just one speech remains ahead of Trump's — UFC President Dana White — and a couple of musical performances — one from Kid Rock and one from Lee Greenwood.

It looks like most of Trump’s immediate family members are here tonight. Before Hulk Hogan took the stage, Trump walked out onto the convention floor and into the VIP booth with his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle; his older daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner; the former president's younger daughter, Tiffany Trump, and her husband Michael Boulos; and others.

Trump's second-oldest son, Eric Trump, is set to speak later tonight. His wife, Lara Trump, was also seen in the VIP box.

There’s been a lot of commentary over the past several days about the confidence among Republicans in Milwaukee. Nowhere is that confidence more obvious than among Trump’s campaign, and his selection of JD Vance as his running mate is being interpreted as a sign of confidence in the polls. (Never mind that Mike Pence was hardly a choice designed to woo swing voters either.)

And yet Thursday has capped off the convention of a campaign that, if it is as much in the lead as it claims, has done so in spite of itself. The speakers’ list has been almost entirely employees on Trump’s payroll or rich celebrities. Tucker Carlson, Dana White, Alina Habba: These are not names who will win over the sliver of persuadable Americans. And the night’s proceedings have been marked by the house band filling time, again and again.

There haven’t been any attempts to shore up Trump’s weaknesses or cement his strengths. Trump may be ahead right now, but four months is a long time in politics, especially in 2024. Nothing about this week suggests that Trump’s staff is ready to save him if and when things go sideways.

Alex Wagner speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

We should note that the Republican National Convention is unified around Donald Trump’s candidacy. But when it comes to literally anything of substance, even within the convention hall itself, different camps have differing opinions.

JD Vance got up there last night and said the Republican Party isn’t the party of Wall Street anymore, they’re the party of the working class. He did that the same day there was reporting that Trump was interested in tapping Jamie Dimon to be the head of the head of the Treasury Department. Those two statements are at odds with one another. 

On mass deportations — there are people holding up mass deportations signs but then we have reports that Hispanic men, in particular, don’t think Trump’s going to follow through on that policy.

The Republican Party largely hasn't been held to account by its voters on any of the policies that Trump seeks to enact, or any of the plans he says he has for a second term. Donald Trump and JD Vance are telling voters: full lockdown, don’t ask us any questions, get in line and pull the lever. This is what you got. That’s unity.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Ahead of wrestler Hulk Hogan’s speech tonight, social media users are raising awareness about racist comments he made in the past. From Tucker Carlson to Trump, this convention has welcomed plenty of people who’ve been derided for their racist rhetoric — Hogan included.

In 2015, he apologized after a recording surfaced of him saying he is “a racist to a point” and repeatedly using the N-word while decrying his daughter dating a Black man.

Trump was expected to speak around 10 p.m. but there are still several speakers to get to and the house band has been playing for over 20 minutes since the last speech. It's unclear what's causing the delay.

Meanwhile, Melania Trump has reportedly arrived to the convention, according to a photo snapped by The New York Times.

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson repeated an old story about protesters coming to his house in his speech tonight.

The incident happened in 2018, as about 20 protesters with the anti-fascist group Smash Racism D.C. showed up at his house, chanting “Tucker Carlson, we will fight! We know where you sleep at night!”

One woman could be overheard in a video posted online saying she wanted to bring a pipe bomb to his house.

The protest was widely condemned and Facebook and Twitter removed the group’s videos of it from the internet.

In his RNC speech, Carlson said that “antifa came to my house,” defining the group inaccurately as “the Democratic Party’s militia.”

He also said that the protesters “tried to come in through the front door,” a claim that he made at the time which was not backed up by police reports or evidence.

Tucker Carlson, whose main platform is social media after Fox News fired him last year, still has huge sway over the Republican Party. He took the stage to one of the biggest applauses so far tonight, and he reportedly played a major role in pushing Trump to pick JD Vance as his running mate: The New York Times reported that when Trump was wavering on Vance as his VP pick, Carlson called up the former president and warned him that if he didn't go with Vance and instead chose a "neocon," U.S. intelligence agencies would be incentivized to assassinate him.

In a statement to the Daily Montanan, Tester said, “While I appreciate his commitment to public service and our country, I believe President Biden should not seek re-election to another term.”

Tester becomes the second sitting senator after Vermont’s Peter Welch to suggest Biden step aside. Earlier this week, Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic nominee for California's Senate seat, also asked Biden to step aside.

Tester, who is in a tight race with businessman Tim Sheehy, also told the Daily Montanan that he supports an open nominating process, rather than designating Vice President Kamala Harris as the new nominee.

Days after waxing nostalgic about an era when American men felt empowered to “punch out” school employees, and warning about the spiritual battle being waged with “anti-human” liberals, Tucker Carlson finally got his chance to gush over Trump on the official RNC stage. 

But just like fellow speakers Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis before him, Carlson hasn’t always had such nice things to say about the former president. 

Last year, Carlson tried to walk back anti-Trump texts that were unearthed during the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit. In those texts, Carlson said he hated Trump “passionately” and called Trump’s presidency a “disaster,” noting “there isn’t really an upside to Trump.”

“The only crime [former] President Trump has committed is loving America,” said Trump lawyer Alina Habba onstage just now.

In fact, Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide an affair ahead of the 2016 election. Two other criminal cases against him are ongoing, and while a third was recently dismissed, special counsel Jack Smith has appealed that dismissal. And Trump has been ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in multiple civil suits involving fraud, defamation and sexual abuse.

Alina Habba, an attorney who represented Trump in the E. Jean Carroll defamation trials, lauded Trump’s character in a dramatic speech.

“Tonight, I want to take you behind the law and behind the headlines, and share with you a side of President Trump that reveals his character, his kindness and his commitment to saving this great country,” said Habba, whose client was ultimately found liable of sexual abuse against Carroll.

At one point, Habba seemed to tear up as she recounted when a bystander in Manhattan shouted his support for Trump while Habba was on the phone with the former president, and Trump asked to speak to the man.

Several other prominent women in Trump’s orbit have also gone to lengths to talk up Trump’s “softer” side in an attempt to humanize him at the RNC.

A short video shown between speakers featured Trump in full election denial mode.

Clearly filmed before last weekend’s shooting, the video shows Trump saying that if he’s re-elected he will move to eliminate all early voting and electronic voting machines and require voter ID across the country.

“We’re going to do it properly,” he said. “We’re going to have good, secure, beautiful elections. We never want what happened in 2020 to happen again.”

The video is part of a broader effort to persuade voters to “use every appropriate tool available” to vote, including voting early and by mail. Trump’s repeated attacks on voting by mail during the 2020 election put the GOP at a strategic disadvantage as the party has to rely more on Election Day turnout.

In the video, Trump also encouraged voters to look for election fraud, which is vanishingly rare despite Trump’s baseless claims.

“Keep your eyes open because these people want to cheat, and they do cheat, and frankly it’s the only thing they do well,” he said.

Thursday’s speaker schedule has plenty of Trump employees and has-been celebrities. What it won’t have is any former Republican presidents, vice presidents or nominees for either office.

"At this year’s RNC, it’s as if there was no Republican Party before Trump came along," Michael A. Cohen wrote earlier this week. "And, in a sense, that’s true. The current incarnation of the GOP bears no resemblance to the party of Lincoln, Reagan or the Bush family. The only real blast from the past is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich."

Read more below:

New York real estate executive Steve Witkoff is the latest in a string of people who apparently were given speaking slots to talk about what a nice guy Trump is in his private life. Witkoff is a longtime friend of Trump’s who was brought in as the first expert witness for the defense in the New York civil fraud trial against Trump and his business last year. The polite applause Witkoff got from the audience tonight shows his speech did more to boost Trump than his courtroom appearance, which didn’t help prevent a $355 million fine against the Trump Organization.

Stephanie Ruhle speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

These ideas being pushed at the RNC, that immigrants are taking your jobs, that we have an immigration problem, this notion that immigrants are stealing American jobs is simply not true.

Now, if you’re worried about the economy, Donald Trump’s plan of mass deportation is only going to hurt our economy. If you take all of these people out of the country, they’re no longer going to be contributing spending here and that’s going to shrink our economy. We’re going to be further short on labor. We know that under the Biden administration, $2 trillion in infrastructure spending is happening. We need a labor force.

For me, the takeaway that I’m scratching my head on, there are all sorts of policies that JD Vance and Donald Trump represent, like extending the corporate tax cut. JD Vance is anti-supporting Ukraine, obviously overturning Roe v. Wade was their crowning achievement, but they’re not talking about any of those things.

JD Vance last night and Donald Trump tonight are pushing this pro-worker populist message. It’s amazing because in the state of Ohio there is a senator who has had a populist message who’s worked for the working man and woman for years, and it’s Sherrod Brown.

If you’re talking about unions, you’ve got the head of the Teamsters here the other night, which was amazing that Trump is potentially getting their vote, but you didn’t see a lot of these people in the crowd cheering them on because the Republican platform is not pro-union. For me, my big takeaway is just this giant disconnect.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Trump entered the convention hall to a raucous reception tonight and sat next to country singer Jason Aldean. 

Aldean, whose single “Try That in a Small Town” was accused of endorsing lynching, is closing out the four-day convention on Thursday night with a performance. At a concert this week, he dedicated the song to Trump after the attempt on the former president’s life.

Pompeo’s speech tonight, besides repeating falsehoods about Chinese spy balloons and foreign policy, also clashed with Trump’s actual record on veterans and the military. 

“I’m disgusted by the Biden administration’s incompetent pullout from [Afghanistan],” Pompeo claimed. But a report from the National Security Council determined Trump’s haphazard announcement that the U.S. would be pulling out of Afghanistan was largely to blame for the chaos that followed once Biden took over. Pompeo also portrayed the MAGA movement as friendlier to veterans than the Biden-Harris admin — a strange claim considering Trump’s disparaging comments about veterans like the late John McCain, and the fact that Trump’s RNC is currently suing Michigan over directives state officials say would make it easier for veterans to register to vote.

John Nieporte, the head pro at Trump’s golf club, was a truly baffling speaker. He made me wonder what are we even doing here? I don’t know. Trump’s golf pro said, “Donald Trump, 21 club championships; Joe Biden, zero.”

 Is Joe Biden a member of Trump’s golf club? He is not.

Trump, still wearing a bandage over his right ear, joined the RNC moments ago, walking into booming applause and cheers.

He shook hands with several attendees on the way to his seat, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who has endorsed Trump once again despite all the nasty things the former president has said about him and his wife.

There is nothing as bipartisan as a good attack line, as Mike Pompeo just proved again.

In a speech harshly criticizing Biden’s foreign policy, Trump’s onetime secretary of state recycled a line from his predecessor, Hillary Clinton.

“The entire administration has failed to tell us the truth, the truth that we all know and is so dangerous to our nation, the truth that Joe Biden can’t handle that 3 a.m. phone call,” he said. “Indeed he won’t take a phone call after about 4 p.m.”

The “3 a.m. phone call” originated back in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, when a Clinton ad used it to try to raise doubts about Barack Obama’s lack of foreign policy experience.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rewrote a lot of Trump’s foreign policy in his speech, but one of the biggest lies was about Biden’s supposed weakness in the face of China.

“Not a single Chinese spy balloon flew across the United States — four years,” he said. “If I was the secretary of state and a Chinese spy balloon flew across the country, I’d have been the former secretary of state — and rightfully so.”

Except that didn’t happen only because Trump’s administration didn’t notice when it happened. Pompeo was one of several Trump administration officials given classified briefings last year because “incidents that occurred during Trump’s presidency weren’t discovered until after Biden took office.” That’s a bit less of an applause line, though, so I guess Pompeo’s strategic amnesia makes sense here.

GOP convention attendees clearly feel like nothing can stop Trump from retaking the presidency. It’s a sense of inevitability that not only says Trump will win, but that he can’t lose. As I explained yesterday, that narrative is a red flag when you consider how much can change between now and November — and how unlikely Republicans are going to be to accept any result other than a total victory for Trump. You can read more below:

“For Twitter to deserve public trust,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk once wrote, “it must be politically neutral.” That pretense of neutrality, on life support ever since Musk purchased the site now known as X, is not just dead but now 6 feet underground.

Visitors to X tonight will find that the #MAGA and #Trump2024 hashtags now have custom emojis and icons on the site. To top it all off, those who click on #Trump2024 are greeted with raining American flags.

A representative for X told tech news website Mashable that this is a paid promotion for Trump’s campaign. Twitter and X have long provided custom emojis for advertising campaigns, nonpartisan events such as NFL games and bipartisan events like Election Day. But never before has a presidential campaign been allowed to purchase such promotion.

While unprecedented, though, this development is hardly unexpected when Musk’s pledge to donate $45 million a month to Trump for the rest of the campaign. It’s another reminder, as my colleague Zeeshan Aleem wrote, of “how acutely vulnerable our civil society is to being hijacked by billionaires who want to reshape the world to their liking.”

Businesswoman Diane Hendricks, who just spoke, is one of the RNC’s so-called “everyday Americans” who have been featured throughout the convention this week. But the idea that Hendricks would be able to sympathize with the average voter is somewhat laughable.

As Rolling Stone reported, Hendricks is the co-founder of a massive roofing wholesale business and a billionaire Trump donor who benefited greatly from his rich-friendly tax cuts during his first term. She was, according to Forbes, the 92nd-richest person in the world in 2024. “Everyday” she is not.

Joy Reid speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

Let’s talk about some of the hottest fashion trends at this convention, like the cowboy hats the Texas delegation brings every year. This year, we’re seeing some Republican delegates give another stylistic show of support for their presidential nominee Donald Trump: white bandages on their right ear, just like the one Trump is wearing to cover the wound he received Saturday.

This is not the first time that delegates at a Republican convention have used a bandage to send a message. But it’s quite different from the one we saw 20 years ago that managed to take away 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry’s advantage over incumbent president George W. Bush at the height of the Iraq War. Then-Senator Kerry had served in combat in Vietnam as a Swift boat captain, while Bush, whose father was a U.S. congressman, wound up serving stateside in the Texas Air National Guard. 

During the 2004 campaign, a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, bankrolled by a Republican megadonor, emerged to smear Kerry’s service record and the injuries that earned him one of three Purple Hearts.

At the 2004 Republican convention, some delegates were Band-Aids with Purple Hearts on their faces to mock what they called a self-inflicted scratch Kerry had sustained. It didn’t matter it sold a lie about combat veteran Kerry, amplifying a baseless charge that he was somehow dishonorable. While George W. Bush sold himself as a wartime president, albeit one who conveniently avoided combat in the war that defined his generation.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Trump’s claim that he wanted to stress “unity” at the Republican convention after the attempt on his life seemed to fall by the wayside when it got underway.

But looked at another way, Trump is getting unity; it’s just among Republicans only. The convention has shown the party coming together in support of the nominee, with Trump’s former rivals speaking on his behalf and an overall jubilant mood in the room. 

And that may have been what Trump meant all along. Consider that as president, he had a habit of bragging about his poll rating among Republicans and with Republican pollsters.

Once he memorably claimed that 52% of women supported him in the 2016 election, which as fact-checkers noted was actually the numbers he got among white women.

So Trump may be getting the unity he meant after all.

Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., has the job of trying to keep control of the House in Republicans' hands. During his speech, he told RNC attendees that “to save America we need to grow our majority.” It’s a tacit admission that there’s no way for the GOP to govern with the size of its very slim majority. What he had the tact not to say though is that it’s thanks to the chaos caucus members who list themselves as Trump’s biggest supporters that Republicans have spent the last two years swinging from internal crisis to crisis.

Diane Evans, labeled as one of the “everyday Americans” speaking tonight, just made a dig at Biden: “I’ve never spoken at a convention before; I’ve never used a teleprompter before. But I figure if Joe Biden can, I can manage all right.”

Anyone under the belief this convention is truly about “unity” could take one look at the Arizona delegation of Republicans in attendance to be proven otherwise. 

I wrote earlier this week about Shelby Busch, the election-denying Arizona delegate selected to announce her state party’s support for Trump at this year’s convention. Busch was in the news recently after video surfaced of her saying she'd like to "lynch" Republican Maricopa County recorder Stephen Richer, who’s been targeted with baseless election conspiracy theories. 

Senate candidate Kari Lake of Arizona used her RNC speech to attack the press and push false claims about immigrants voting in federal elections. Her icy relationship with the press was further exposed in viral footage of her withering during an interview in which she was asked about her election conspiracism. 

And Arizona state Rep. Alexander Kolodin, a fellow election-denier, was captured on camera telling Democracy Now host Amy Goodman that Goodman and Democrats tried to “assassinate” Trump, peddling a far-right conspiracy theory that claims liberals are responsible for the recent shooting at a Trump rally. 

So much for “unity.”

Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., who heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, was the first major speaker tonight and made the case for an “America First majority” in the Senate. The speech was what’s become standard boilerplate for the GOP at this point, calling out liberal Democrats who “speak like moderates but vote with Joe Biden” for opposing the Keystone Pipeline and “taking away your Second Amendment rights.”

But he got the biggest response when attacking trans kids, trotting out the tired line that Democrats “can’t even define what a woman is.” But “back in Montana, we know the difference between a cow and a bull,” Daines said.

A reminder, though: Anti-trans rhetoric failed to win over voters during the 2022 midterms, and it’s unlikely that it will this time around either.

Fmr. Gov. John Kasich speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

Will we see a different Donald Trump tonight? He’s been talking about love and compassion but a lot of people are skeptical about it. If he is going to talk about love and unity, and all that other stuff, we’ve got to see if that’s for real. Words are one thing and actions are another. Republicans think they’ve got an excellent chance of winning this but I do think they are very unsettled by the prospect of President Joe Biden not being the candidate.

Republicans have had a good convention — any way you want to look at it. Now, the question is, what kind of a convention are the Democrats going to have? When you look at what’s happened, by and large for the Republicans, it’s been pretty good. They seem to be together and have largely controlled some of the rhetoric — we’ve not seen Jan. 6 people parading around.

What’s going to be interesting is what kind of a convention the Democrats will have. If Democrats go into a convention that is sort of, but maybe not totally, wide open, it will be exciting and different. That would be something much different than what you’re seeing with the Republicans right now. 

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

At a sound check at the convention this afternoon, musician Kid Rock changed the lyrics to his 2000 song “American Bad Ass” to reference the recent assassination attempt on Trump.

Rock’s original lyrics: “They call me cowboy, I’m the singer in black / Throw a finger in the air, let me see where you’re at / And say (hey, hey).”

As sung during a sound-check earlier this afternoon: “They call me cowboy, I’m the singer in black / Throw a fist in the air, let me see where you’re at / And say (fight, fight).”

The new lyrics reference Trump raising his fist after the failed assassination in Butler, Penn., and chanted “Fight! Fight! Fight!” to the audience. 

Attendees at the convention have adopted “Fight! Fight! Fight!” as their own chant at several points, and a Trump-owned sneaker company is also selling shoes with the slogan and an image of Trump’s bloodied face.

Stephanie Ruhle speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

RNC attendees are not talking about cutting taxes for the rich or extending the corporate tax cut. They are not talking about the crowning achievement, which is overturning Roe v. Wade. We are not hearing about ending support for Ukraine, and the question is why.

And the answer is, those policies — the actual policies that Donald Trump stands for — are not popular with the majority of American people. Obviously, the people in this arena are going to vote for Trump — win, lose or draw. But there are not enough people here to win the next presidential election. Trump knows this. JD Vance knows this.

So the challenge is for Democrats: are you going to educate the American people, and independent and swing voters, to say their populist message, their blue-collar worker message, isn’t reflective of what their policies are going to be? Two nights ago, the head of the Teamsters was here. News flash: The Republican Party does not support unions.

So my question is going to be, is there ever going to be a connection between the message Donald Trump has and this audience realizing that his policies don’t reflect it?

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Trump’s speech tonight will be a crowning moment for a politician who has defied massive odds to solidify his control over the GOP.

The former president left the White House in 2021 having lost the election and incited a failed insurrection at the Capitol, with many prominent Republicans disavowing him. In the years that followed, he was relegated to the political sidelines as criminal investigations into his conduct after the 2020 election slowly progressed. He was indicted in four separate cases last year, and two months ago, one of those cases resulted in a conviction on 34 felony counts. He had initially been scheduled to be sentenced just four days before the start of the convention.

Yet the past few weeks have seen a stunning turn of his fortunes. Biden’s disastrous debate performance has overshadowed Trump’s incessant lying, and the public narrative has shifted from Trump’s alleged criminal behavior to Biden’s age. Then the Supreme Court ruled in one of those criminal cases that, as president, Trump enjoys some immunity from prosecution, a decision that jeopardizes the other indictments against him and has delayed his sentencing in his hush money conviction. On Monday, the first day of the convention, the Florida classified documents case against him was dismissed by a judge.

Trump, having narrowly survived an assassination attempt on Saturday, has also elevated his already-exalted stature within the party. 

His moniker, “Teflon Don,” is perhaps more apt now than ever.

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley just officially opened tonight's session. Several more presentations will take place before the speakers take the stage, including the invocation, the Pledge of Allegiance and the singing of the National Anthem.

Political conventions can make or break a career. But one of the breakout stars of the Republican National Convention this year appears to be the house band, which has ranked among the top searches on Google about the RNC over the last four days.

The band, Sixwire, can be heard playing what could be described as “dad rock” during breaks and in between speeches, covering hit songs like “Don’t Stop Believin’” and “Life is a Highway.” 

The Nashville-based band, which released one album back in 2002, has experience as a house band on reality TV shows such as “Nashville Star” and “Next Great American Band” and at various professional sports gigs.

The investigation into the Trump assassination attempt continued this week as the RNC unfolded in Milwaukee. And while many details about the attack have come into focus, one key detail remains unknown: the shooter's motive.

Federal investigators have been unable so far to determine the underlying ideology of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old gunman who fired at Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.

As NBC News reported today: "Investigators looked into his internet history and found that Crooks made searches this month specific to Trump, a rally, and the [Democratic National Convention], according to a senior U.S. law enforcement official." Crooks was a registered Republican but also made a $15 donation to a progressive cause in 2021, according to NBC News.

Despite the lack of evidence about a potential motive, some top Republicans immediately blamed Biden, Democrats and "the media" in the wake of the shooting. Let's see if Trump and his allies stick to the "unity" message they promised to deliver tonight.

Ari Melber speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

Trump's address tonight is significant and historic: a former president who was extremely close to an assassin’s bullet and death returning here to address his party and also the nation. And that is true regardless of one’s view of Trump, his policies or his politics. It’s true even for critics who note that he has not always extended sympathy or proper gravity after political violence targeting others. And that kind of debate is about whether other people uphold the civic and peaceful traditions and whether we do that regardless of what others do, what they do.

The test for America right now ultimately is about us. For anyone who fails to consistently reject violence — well, that would be on them. For those who want to continue to uphold our civic values and peace and justice, it’s a different path. That’s the serious context for tonight’s address in a nation that has lived through so many attempted and completed assassinations.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

The Trump campaign has leaned heavily on celebrity endorsements this go-round. Many of the people with government experience and relevant knowledge from his first presidency — including Trump’s own vice president, of course — have refused to back him, with many painting the former president as a threat to democracy. In lieu of that support, the Trump campaign has tried to highlight its support from celebrities and influencers instead.

The RNC has underscored this, relying on model Amber Rose to tell voters that the MAGA movement is welcoming to all people — a message undercut by the adherents’ widespread opposition to diversity measures and immigrants — and reality show participant Savannah Chrisley to push Trumpian falsehoods about politicized prosecutions. Tonight will be more of the same, as WWE wrestler Hulk Hogan, UFC president Dana White and country music singer Lee Greenwood are scheduled to speak.

But this strategy seems to have limitations. A USA Today/Suffolk poll released in May showed that celebrity endorsements — with the exception of former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama — have little to no impact on the overwhelming majority of voters’ decisions.

Trump claimed in a pair of interviews last week that the acceptance speech he’d been ready to give tonight was tossed out.

“I had all prepared an extremely tough speech, really good, all about the corrupt, horrible administration,” the former president told the New York Post. “But I threw it away.”

Trump told the Washington Examiner: “The speech I was going to give on Thursday was going to be a humdinger. Had this not happened, this would’ve been one of the most incredible speeches.” He added: “Honestly, it’s going to be a whole different speech now.”

It’s unclear exactly who the actual author of the speech is, given that Trump is not known for drafting his own lengthy remarks and used ghostwriters for all of his books. Longtime aide Stephen Miller was the wordsmith behind his 2016 acceptance speech and most of Trump’s other major addresses in office.

Charlie Sykes speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

We need to talk about how united this Republican Party is and how committed they are to this agenda. I think we need to take it seriously. Trump 2.0 will be much more serious, much more extreme than Trump 1.0. And we need to be very, very clear-eyed about what it would mean to have Donald Trump in the White House and 53 or 54 Republican senators.

Anyone who thinks that they are not serious about this is naive. What right now are the guardrails? What are the limits? The Supreme Court has told Donald Trump that in effect, he is above the law. The law will not deter him. If he gets in, he doesn’t have to worry about impeachment. He won’t have to worry about Republicans pushing back against him.

So as Democrats decide what they’re going to do, I think they really need to step back and go, "You know, if we really do think that this is an existential crisis, maybe we should behave like it."

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Trump is pretty freewheeling at his rallies, news conferences and TV interviews, but his two previous convention speeches (in 2016 and 2020) were among the few times he stuck to the script.

But that script is still classic Trump, even if the rhetoric is more high-flown than usual.

His 2016 convention speech stands out for its darkness. Nicknamed the “Midnight in America” speech by Time magazine, it described an America besieged by violent criminals, flooded with immigrants in the country illegally, humiliated abroad, and impoverished by bad policy choices.

After the assassination attempt over the weekend, Trump said he was rewriting his speech to focus on unity and less on tearing down Biden’s record. We’ll see how much he follows through on that.

But even if he aims for a more optimistic tone, the dark moments will still be there. 

His 2020 convention speech is a good example of how this could play out. As the incumbent, he couldn’t repeat his previous approach and he began by talking about how he was “brimming with confidence” about the nation’s future.

But that tone soon faded as he began contrasting the choice between re-electing him or voting for a “socialist agenda to demolish our cherished destiny” and “give free rein to violent anarchists, agitators and criminals who threaten our citizens.”

“In this election will decide whether we will defend the American Way of Life, or whether we allow a radical movement to completely dismantle and destroy it,” he said.

We’ll see tonight which direction Trump goes with this speech, whether it’s more like his 2016 speech, his 2020 speech or a new thing entirely.

As Republicans prepare to fete Trump tonight, Democrats appear to be edging closer to the tipping point for Biden to withdraw as major figures in the party reportedly have spoken with the president and his allies about his chances in November and as big donations slow down dramatically, according to NBC News. Some of Biden’s fiercest backers are privately conceding that the end of his candidacy seems inevitable now, NBC News reported, with one person close to the president saying: “We’re close to the end.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer had a “blunt” discussion with Biden about the race. Rep. Nancy Pelosi reportedly told Biden that he cannot win and that he could jeopardize Democrats’ hold on the House. And even former President Barack Obama has told allies that Biden should “seriously consider the viability of his candidacy,” according to The Washington Post.

None of these top Democrats have publicly called on Biden to step aside, but this reporting only adds to the pressure on the president.

Last weekend’s shooting apparently is on Trump’s mind as he prepares to give his speech tonight. A source told NBC News that the former president looked around while being shown the stage where he’d be speaking and commented that it’s a lot safer inside.

It will be interesting to see when Trump resumes outdoor rallies and whether his demeanor will be different in comparison with indoor events.

A senior Trump adviser said Thursday that Project 2025 is a “pain in the ass” for the campaign.

Trump has sought, unsuccessfully, to distance himself from the 920-page plans for a second term put together by the far-right Heritage Foundation think tank led by several of his former staffers.

That’s largely because the proposal includes a lot of unpopular ideas, such as dismantling the Department of Education and withdrawing Food and Drug Administration approval of abortion pills.

In a Politico-sponsored event at the Republican convention, senior Trump adviser Chris LaCivita said that the think tank’s proposals aren’t helping.

“The issues that are going to win us this campaign are not the issues that they want to talk about,” he said, blaming the media for talking about them as well. “And you guys know it which is the reason why you write about it.”

He also mocked the authors as nobodies, even though they include Trump’s own former Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, his former acting Defense secretary, his former Housing and Urban Development secretary, his former deputy chief of staff, and his former Justice Department senior counsel.

“Let’s go find another guy who worked, you know, cleaning up the West Wing or some back office who’s going to write a policy statement and you guys are going to write a story about it,” LaCivita said, sarcastically.

Vought, it should be noted, is not only one of the key authors of Project 2025 but also the Republican National Committee’s platform policy director.

Though it was reported last week that Melania Trump would attend the RNC, marking a rare public appearance by the elusive former first lady, she has been noticeably absent from the event so far.

She is expected to show up for her husband's speech, and though she addressed the 2016 and 2020 conventions, she isn't scheduled to speak tonight.

It's unclear why she has decided not to attend much of the RNC this year. Some people close to Melania Trump reportedly say she's shaken by the assassination attempt against her husband. But, as NBC News reported, she's largely avoided public events since before the shooting and has only joined a handful of events on the campaign trail.

Read more below:

While Nikki Haley espouses or accommodates many MAGA values, she still waged war against Trump during the primaries by attacking his character and calling him unfit for office. She described him as “totally unhinged” and pushed back against his thirst for “revenge.” She warned that he is “declining” cognitively and called him a “toxic” agent of “chaos” who lacks “moral clarity.” And she diverged from a key pillar of the MAGA worldview by stating that America doesn’t “rig elections” and acknowledged that Biden won the 2020 election. 

Nonetheless, Haley offered Trump an endorsement that was not only full-throated, but even helped revise his record and boosted him in an area where she has had sharp policy differences from him in the past: foreign policy. As U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration, Haley diverged from Trump by staking out more hawkish positions on Russia than he did, including by making clear her belief that Russia meddled in the 2016 elections. During the primaries, Haley denounced Trump for encouraging Russia to attack NATO allies.

But in her RNC speech, Haley praised Trump as a guarantor of a “strong America” and blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on President Joe Biden — you know, the guy who is a NATO traditionalist and helped organize an unprecedented sanctions regime against Putin.

Read more below:

Trump's and Biden’s running mates may not have agreed to terms for a debate yet, but Vice President Kamala Harris is already gearing up.

At a rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on Thursday, Harris said that Vance told a “compelling story” about his life at the convention but argued that “it was not the full story.”

She went on to talk about Project 2025, saying it’s “extreme” and “divisive." She argued that the Trump-Vance campaign has not lived up to its promise of unity.

“If you claim to stand for unity, you need to do more than just use the word,” she said. “You cannot claim you stand for unity if you are pushing an agenda that deprives whole groups of Americans of basic freedoms, opportunity and dignity.”

She went on to criticize the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and proposals to cut access to abortion and cut taxes for the wealthy.

Today's session features the theme "Make America Great Again" — what else? — and is scheduled to begin at 6:45 p.m. ET and end around 10:30 p.m. ET.

More than a dozen Trump allies will address the convention tonight before the nominee takes the stage as the final speaker. Kid Rock is slated to perform right before Trump speaks.

Here are the speakers, in order of expected appearance:

• Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, chair of the National Republican Senate Committee
• Diane Hendricks, described as an "everyday American" by the RNC
• Diane Evans, another “everyday American” speaker
• Linda McMahon, former Small Business Administration administrator
• Mike Pompeo, former secretary of state
• Pastor Lorenzo Sewell, another “everyday American” speaker
• John Nieporte, another “everyday American” speaker
• Steve Witkoff, real estate mogul
• Alina Habba, lawyer and senior Trump campaign adviser
• Tucker Carlson, former Fox News host
• Carrie Ruiz, another “everyday American” speaker
• Hulk Hogan, WWE Hall of Famer
• Annette Albright, another “everyday American” speaker
• Franklin Graham, evangelical leader
• Lee Greenwood, country music singer
• Eric Trump, Trump's second-oldest son
• Dana White, Ultimate Fighting Championship president
• Donald Trump, former president and GOP presidential nominee

It’s noteworthy how much this week has been designed to play up Trump’s purported toughness. Because Trump has modeled himself after dictators and authoritarians around the globe, this was likely on the campaign’s vision board even before last weekend’s shooting at a Trump rally. But in the wake of that attack, it was all but guaranteed that Republicans would want to portray Trump like a war hero. (Some supporters at the RNC have donned an ersatz ear bandage in a nod to Trump's injured ear.)

Trump’s surrogates have gone to great lengths over the last few days to portray him as the candidate of choice for macho guys. For example, check out some of these clips of UFC President Dana White, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and far-right activist Charlie Kirk gushing over Trump, trying to convince men that the former president is the strong man they’ve always wanted to see in charge. 

For more on this PR campaign, check out my previous blogs here, here and here.

Looming over the RNC is the unsettled question of who the Trump-Vance ticket will run against in November. Whether Biden ends up as the Democratic nominee is still up in the air, and that uncertainty has been reflected at the convention in how often the speakers have attacked Vice President Kamala Harris, who seems among the most likely options to replace Biden at the top of the ticket should he withdraw. It’s also plausible that Trump will seek to contrast the disarray among Democrats with Republicans’ show of unity under his leadership this week.

The official RNC calendar this week features several showings of "Reagan," an upcoming biopic about Ronald Reagan.

The movie, which has been under development for 14 years, is set to be released in August, but it will probably never have a better audience than this week. (Watch a trailer for it here.)

It’s clearly a movie aimed mainly at conservatives; it's based on a book by an author whose other works include “The Devil and Karl Marx” and another about American progressives called “Dupes.”

Dennis Quaid stars as Reagan in a bit of stunt casting that is less about looking like Reagan and more about hitting a similar level of Hollywood stardom (although he nails the voice.)

The movie also features arch-conservative actors Jon Voight and Kevin Sorbo and in another bit of stunt casting, the lead singer of Creed as Frank Sinatra. 

Anticipation for Trump’s speech tonight is higher than ever after Saturday’s shocking turn of events. After quite literally dodging a bullet to survive an assassination attempt, the GOP nominee has claimed to want to unite the country. He told the New York Post that he ditched a previous convention speech that he said was “all about the corrupt, horrible administration” and was rewriting a new one focused on unity.

On the campaign trail, Trump has frequently hit the same notes in his speeches, using similar terms to criticize Biden and Democrats, vowing to punish his political enemies and lamenting what he characterizes as the country’s downward trajectory. As he receives a hero’s welcome from his party tonight, his ability to stick to this ostensible new message of unity — after years and years of railing against his perceived foes — is likely to be sorely tested.